Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released, and 2K Games and developer Gearbox have to be happy that the game has finally dropped so that the longest running joke in the video games industry will end. All isn’t a celebration, however; the reviews of the game are pretty bad, with the game achieving a Metacritic score of just 49 as of the writing of this story. A rating of 49, as you can guess, is pretty darn bad.

After reading a number of the reviews, we can tell you that the majority of the reviews are pretty unkind, suggesting that the game was just cobbled together; which is surprising, given the length that the game was in development and the large amount of time there was to develop a story line and create assets that could be used in the final title produced.

In the end, we suspect that DNF will sell pretty well, but it will never make back the amount of money invested in the development of the game. The game teases another sequel, which we do suspect will be much better than this mess of a game. While there appeared to be some momentum, in the end it just didn’t live up to the hype. But how could it after 12 years of waiting?

Still, we wanted and hoped for more, but honestly, getting the game out was the first thing that needed to happen and that it did. We expect next time around the next offering in the franchise will be much better and deliver a better experience, or so we can hope.

Gearbox Software rolled out its latest and probably the final trailer before the game launches on June 10th.

Playing with the gameplay camera for around two minutes, the new trailer gives you an insight to everything that you loved in the original game and then some. Oversized monsters, girls, jetpack flight, vehicles, etc. are only a part of what awaits you with the long awaited Duke Nukem Forever title.

What else to say - we can't wait to take it out for a spin once it is officially released. We'd very much like to follow this up with a joke but the industry has made it impossible to be creative after all these years.

We’ve scoured plenty of ancient manuscripts and not one of them indicated that prophecies of “launching when it’s done” means February 2011, but Duke Nukem Forever is now listed on Amazon and Gamestop with the date Feb 1, 2011. Furthermore, there is also live footage that you really should see.

As far as the preview goes, it seems just like the good old Duke - defecating, beating up bad guys and making it look as well as sound good. It appears like the devs did their best to retain the same feel but check it out for yourself- you'll surely find everything just like you've left it in the previous installment, and then some. We love the last line though. Really, that kind of honesty is hard to find.

Note however that Gearbox acted quickly to shoot the alleged date down and the company claims it’s basically just a placeholder and not to be regarded as launch date. We, on the other hand, couldn’t care less as this is the first actual fixed date we can hang on. And hang we will. And we intend to hold on to it like God’s truth until it gets pushed back by a few months and, hopefully, released. Why? Well tell me – what are few measly months compared to 13 years?